Russia’s official blacklist of illegal gambling sites has been expanded recently with the addition of some 50 domains, including major industry names such as Rational Group and bwin-party.
The registry, known as the “Roskomnadzor,” was first established in 2012 and currently contains nearly 4,000 domain names, many of which are pornographic websites, online pharmaceutical companies, “illegal” political videos and other sites promoting criminal activities.
In the gambling sector, ISPs are already blocking Russian customers from accessing the dot-coms of 888, Ladbrokes and Unibet in addition to Rational, which operates the PokerStars brands, and bwin.party, which operates PartyPoker among other portals.
Betfair, William Hill, Bet365 and Winner.com, all iPoker skins, were also appended, as were Betsson and the U.S.-facing Intertops.
Rational said business would continue as usual because while access to primary domains is blocked, the game servers are still accessible, so players that have downloaded the client can still log in and play, and payment processing has not yet been affected.
“At this time we do not believe recent developments in Russia changes our ability to offer services to Russian players. As such our operations continue as usual,” Rational said.
